First Timer AWP16 Debrief, or Notes from a Literary Lilliputian

At AWP you will meet for the first time your true tribe, literary geeks who nerd out on words. Since you are likely a literary type, you already know the Ben Franklin quote about what happens to fish and company after three days, so I won’t repeat it. Much the same can be said about AWP16 in Los Angeles, though there were also stellar moments. Here are a few of my takeaways.

You will see odd ducks of every ilk. Like the woman who walks away from the snack bar shaking her head and repeating loudly, “No, no, no,” after the cashier says, “$4.00.”

You will experience frequent frustration and joy in quick succession. Like the security guard in front of the Bookfair, who will speak with authority on how to get to Room 401, waving his arm in a direction that you already know is completely and utterly wrong. Soon after, the female security guard pushing mid-seventies, wearing thick, padded shoes from years of working on her feet, with the cool bleached streak in her hair and pink lipstick, who smiles and calls you, Honey, who walks you halfway to your destination. You love her so much for being kind and right.

Phyllis Brotherton

You will see garb you have never imagined, first surprising you, then breaking you out of your Macy’s/Chico’s mode, taking mental fashion notes for next time.

You will attend good panels and so-so panels; panels you will walk out of and panels you won’t want to end.

You will spot your lit mag hero, whom you’ve joked is your “fantasy husband (if you were in to husbands),” with his titanium-orbed spectacles and Buddha body. You will walk behind him all the way to the conference center, sit two tables from him in the bar chatting affably to others, and you will never, not once, muster the gumption to walk up and introduce yourself, because you cannot fathom a follow-up sentence after hello.

You will not take advantage of the “Introverts & Networking” panel, since you want to attend the “Self as Protagonist” panel. (Fact-checkers beware: I am employing the “creative” aspect of CNF.)

You will not be invited to private parties because you are a literary Lilliputian. You intuitively understand this but detect a slight bitter taste in your mouth, an everyday and entirely human case of sour grapes. By the end of the bleary-eyed three days, you have ceased pining after literary rock stars and groupie kiss-butts, of which you were/are one.

You will appreciate the small audience who attend your reading, even if 25 of the 28 are friendly faces. You learn that sub-tribes exist and you will eventually locate one, which aligns with your unique set of writing desires, world view and quirks.

You will feel empowered by the feminist evening event where you witness unapologetic women kicking some ass of their own in their writing and performance. You will buy the t-shirt with the f-word on it and know in your gut that after you have flown out of this alternate universe, time warp of a conference and land in your own reality town, you may never have the courage to wear it in front of your spouse, to the grocery store, or God forbid, to work, even though you will want to nurture the tiny seed of radical womanness and help it grow into a fierce fire.

You will next time learn how to better navigate food. Feasting on bacon-wrapped dates, good wine, sumptuous burrata and $32 oatmeal (OK, with toast and coffee), will quickly break your budget, and when no university or other entity is footing the bill, you risk turning into the Shaking Head Woman walking out of the snack bar yelling, no, no, no! Next time you will pack instant oatmeal, tea bags, protein bars and almonds, resolving to persevere each day all the way to the evening meal, expending precious moolah only on water, and maybe, maybe a Diet Coke.

You will give some people a pass, such as the talented, MFA grad, who frequently came to class drunk, whom you plied with granola bars and peanuts to keep him awake, who reminded you of a young Ernest Hemingway on the verge of flaming out, who greets you from behind an esteemed lit journal booth, and says, “Oh, you are reading in that panel, too? So, it’s all of you.” All of us? All of who? The older women? While our moderator fell ill prior to the conference, two of the four of us present are under forty-five. We are a disparate group, one teacher, one professor, one retiree, and one working outside of education (me). Three straight, one gay (me). Three dark haired, one gray (me). Is his a categorization much like Edward Stein’s back-sleepers and front-sleepers?

You will give another pass to those you’ve personally invited to attend your reading, who decline because they have a conflict, a very real and valid excuse. You will also forgive yourself for making the same excuse when you want to attend another panel or can’t sit through one more panel or want to hibernate in your room. You will never make it to Room 507, the Quiet Space, though you desperately wish to; there is just no time to be quiet.

Didion’s Corvette

You may manage to make one good point in a Q & A. Mine: A good-hearted and ever-so-polite smack down of one panel guy who posits that Joan Didion’s cool persona, i.e. the sunglasses, the Corvette, the cigarette, is merely a result of good marketing, while in fact the real Joan is crabby, conservative and slightly mentally ill. You ask if we should possibly consider that forty or fifty years after our cool twenties and thirties, after all that life and loss, who doesn’t become crabby, conservative and slightly mentally ill. Joan was cool. We all were cool in the Sixties.

You will be rocked by inspiring advice found in the oddest of places that will alter your writing journey. In your old copy of Like a Beggar, that you lug to AWP just to get Ellen Bass’s autograph, and on the way home on the plane you open it and read, “Be brave.”

You will drink your post-AWP morning coffee out of a mug inscribed with Cheryl Strayed’s words, “Write like a Motherfucker,” and you intend to do just that.
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Phyllis Brotherton is a late-blooming writer, receiving her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Fresno State University at the age of sixty-six. Her essays have appeared in literary journals including Your Impossible Voice, Spry, Shark Reef, and Under the Gum Tree. Her essay, “Ashes and File Cabinets,” was nominated for 2015 “Best of the Net” by Jet Fuel Review. She was fortunate to participate in the AWP16 Panel Reading, “Worlds Within the Other California.” She works at ValleyPBS and lives with her wife, Denise, in Clovis, CA.

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§ 18 Responses to First Timer AWP16 Debrief, or Notes from a Literary Lilliputian

Absolutely delightful. Thank you Phyllis for allowing me to experience AWP without having to actually make eye contact with anyone or speak. What a hoot. Maybe I’ll venture to D.C. next year and get to witness the shenanigans first hand.